Characterization of the acoustic pressure waveforms in Rijke tubes with spatially varying heat sources and temperature distributions

In this work, we implement an asymptotic expansion technique that leverages a small perturbation parameter that arises in the context of one-dimensional tubes with open-open end point configurations and spatially varying heat sources. This approach, when paired with a spectral collocation eigensolver, enables us to produce accurate predictions of the pressure mode shapes and frequencies over a wide range of parameters. These include the temperature gain across the heat source, the heat source length and location, and the overall thermal profile. The latter is intended to reproduce different flow heating configurations that emulate Rijke tube characteristics. Specifically, this investigation begins by considering three piecewise representations of the heat source by juxtaposing constant–constant temperatures before and after a heating element whose temperature is prescribed locally using three analytical functions: linear, exponential, and power-law profiles. This is followed by a logistic distribution that can be globally applied to provide a uniformly valid, continuous, and differentiable thermal profile spanning the entire tube, including the heat source element. Our fundamental formulation relies on Green's functions and an integral formulation that enables us to extract all acoustic frequencies analytically. These are found to increase monotonically with successive elevations in the temperature gain across the heat source, retractions of the heat source, length reductions in the heat source, and smoothing of the temperature gain. Along similar lines, the pressure mode shapes are found to exhibit blunter and often linear variations for higher temperature gains, longer heat sources, and upstream displacements of the heat source toward the inlet.